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All posts for the month August, 2017

(Most) Every Thursday, I make a brief development blog on my card/board game, Dead Parents Dungeon (DPD). It’s a fantasy-themed, light-hearted game about families and dungeons.

Current Progress: Uuuuuuuuugh

IDK. Like there’s a tableau of three village cards, but you can also dig two cards deep for a specific card as a village action. If your dig doesn’t get the one you want you can spend a monster head to dig an extra card. Retirement cards can improve these numbers to represent the services retired, experienced PCs can bring to a town.

All PCs have relationship arrows, and at least one has to connect a PC to a family. Your theytriarch might have two side arrows (brother/sister/partner) and an up arrow (parent), but they can still have a baby provided either: that baby’s PC card has an up arrow or that theytriarch has a partner who has a down arrow (child). When you marry someone you immediately roll for babies. At the start of each turn, babies age into adults, then ALL couples roll for babies.

PC cards have a die and one ability. Hopefully, I’ll be able to keep the fighters like equipment, wizards use monster-head-as-spell-components, and thieves avoid suffering consequences themes. Because PCs now only add a single die and an ability to a dungeon, the motivation for taking multiple PCs into a dungeon (beyond double-dipping loot) is synergy between simple abilities. Equipment/heirlooms now do most of the heavy dice-piling.

Twist cards are gonna work parents and siblings hard (in a grave-ward direction) to push each family towards having only one heir per generation. Cousins might as well bathe in Smaug’s Best (TM) Ketchup. Fuck cousins. ALL GAME BALANCING WILL HENCEFORTH BE DONE ON TWIST CARDS, A CARD TYPE I HAVE NEVER EVEN PROTOTYPED.

Each family starts with a piece of equipment that doubles as a “family card.” Or maybe every piece of equipment has a “Family Ability” and the other equipment just give die bonuses. No, that’s boring. The “heirloom equipment” is the first one you play. It hangs out on top. All other equipment give a die bonus and an ability, but once you upgrade the heirloom with a new equipment, you lose the ability of the last non-heirloom equipment and only keep the die bonus. No more “village abilities,” just monster type bonuses, re-rolls, etc.

Monsters are going to kill, drain equipment cards, and probably force some draws of Twist cards (or activation of Twist cards in the tableau). Why not? Maybe they’ll have different colors so they’ll feel different.

Retirement cards previously had two costs (I don’t know why). They should definitely have only one.

There used to be only five Rumors, meaning the game was only five dungeons/turns long OR that it had several non-dungeon turns. Rumors are now less special and more plentiful.

The actual narrative is so short here, I wish for a better B-plot. I feel we learn nothing, the crew learns nothing, and nothing actually happens. It’s just a bunch of filmmakers asking if they’ve blown our minds yet.

Speaking of amateurs, on September 10th Derek and I will be streaming as we watch six episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation, “The Dauphin,” “Contagion,” “The Royale,” “Time Squared,” “The Icarus Factor,” and “Pen Pals.” I tried to get the biggest streak of bad episodes possible. Stream will start at 9:00 AM central time and will feature stills from the episode with audio from Derek and myself. We’ll be at: https://www.twitch.tv/vanvelding

The Beige and The Bold is available on iTunes, Stitcher, and other podcasting platforms. It updates Monday mornings at 2:00 AM ET / 1:00 CT.

Part of being thrown back in time to Louisiana is that I’m with people who play

goddamn it

Warhammer 40k.

I was asked to come up with a campaign system and I did but I failed because (1) I didn’t remember some numbers and (2) I didn’t push the system because I hate 40k and there are limits to my goodwill and regular will.

Also, I guess the research I do before I start a program (swear to the gods, I do) was cursory and didn’t yield much. After I closed the project and folks who actually like Warhammer (the freaks) announced they were working on it, I folded up shop and resolved to make this post.

But then it occurred to me, not remembering I had already done some research, that I should do some research.

I would love to visit spreadsheet planet. It would accomplish more than this episode.

In this episode, I forgot what the name of this website is. Is it Kris.com? It’s not. I also mixed up “The Omen,” “Rosemary’s Baby,” and “Eraserhead.” But I did not mix up how much I love potatoes though.

Also, shout-out to listener and commenter Skiltao who pitched the idea of a “Skin of Evil”/”Conspiracy”/”The Child” three-parter which would have given us the kind of through-line and body horror that would’ve done some of these episodes some justice.

The Beige and The Bold is available on iTunes, Stitcher, and other podcasting platforms. It updates Monday mornings at 2:00 AM ET / 1:00 CT.

Every Thursday, I make a brief development blog on my card/board game, Dead Parents Dungeon (DPD). It’s a fantasy-themed, light-hearted game about families and dungeons.

Current Progress: Rebooting

What is best in life? To see your family grow proud before you. To hear the lamentations of monsters. To retire responsibly to that little castle on the beach you always talked about.

Dead Parents Dungeon is a game where players take on the role of adventuring families who seek the money and fame which can only be found by defeating dangerous monsters in the many frightening dungeons of the world. Players manage marriages, children, and heirlooms between the life-threatening forays into the world’s darkest corners. The first player to put aside enough monster heads to earn a total of 10 retirement points has the most successful family and is the winner!

The new take on Dead Parents Dungeon keeps the dice. It keeps gear (now Heirlooms). It keeps Adventurers and Monsters, but dispenses with the class leveling and minion mechanics. It gets rid of the scars and silver currency and converts monsters directly into monster heads.